Will Your Chilcdren Ever Remember You Like You Do Your Parents

Cliches are routinely dismissed. And yet they would not have lasted so long were there not some truth to them. Take for instance: Too much of a good thing! Mom warned me of that the day she shared her secret recipe for her magnifico pasta sauce. I will be thinking about that wisdom during these holidays.

In Mom's day we didn't have today's splendid gaggle of photographic gadgets that allow us to take and edit and re-take a gazillion family scenes over these next few weeks. So many in fact, the family will likely never have the time nor the inclination to sit down and go through them all.

"All" is the operative word here, because it's hard to become as excited about 25 different shots of the new baby or that dozen or so of Dad trying to carve the turkey. One of each would have done it! Done it so this image would truly stand out. Next day, next week, 10 years from now.

That's how it was when some of us were more photographically challenged. Fewer pictures but oh so much more cherishable exactly because they were so few. Then even better than the few in our albums were the infinity in our minds. Our memories of those days. Of Dad and Mom and sister and brother and uncles and....

Well, here's the point which may get lost in today's staggering abundance. By the very fact we could capture so few of those precious moments, the ones we do have become even more treasured. Then when the albums ran out of pictures, we have our perfectly lit memories to recall all the rest.

To recall Mom and Dad with so much more beauty and kindness, so many less lines and blemishes. Canon and Nokia have yet to make a lens that can catch the magic [ and yes the illusions ] of my far away Christmastimes.

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Meet The Blogger

Jack Spatafora

40 years educator/writer/intellectual vagabond...speech writer for the White House and Fortune 500 CEOs...regular contributor to the op-ed pages of the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun Times, Pioneer Press, New World...teleplays and documentaries on PBS, ABC and NBC... 50-year colleague of Bob Newhart and 60 year spouse of Chicago actress Joan Spatafora...who is by far prettier than Bob!